


hope

by liquidcourage



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, Motherhood, aunt cass is basically like a mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 15:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19994134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidcourage/pseuds/liquidcourage
Summary: five times aunt cass was there and one time tadashi wasn't.





	hope

**Author's Note:**

> parts of this are inspired by taylor swift's 'the best day'. please consider giving it a listen. 
> 
> find me on [tumblr!](http://ezwriting.tumblr.com)

i.

His mother and father are gone. It's a lonely thought. A sad thought. He still keeps waiting for them to walk in the door and take them home. It feels like a bad dream. 

Hiro’s smart, but he doesn’t understand yet. He keeps asking when Mom and Dad will be back. He’s too little, and he doesn’t get it. Tadashi can’t help but feel alone. He misses his Mom’s hugs and his Dad’s bedtime stories. He tucks his legs in and rests his chin on his knees, looking out the window. Hiro’s asleep in the next room, and Aunt Cass had to go downstairs to deal with something in the cafe. 

He’s all alone right now. Sometimes he feels like he’ll always be alone. It’s hard right now to look on the bright side. He wants to go home, but this  _ is _ his home now. It just doesn’t feel like it yet. He wonders if it ever will. 

He doesn’t realize Aunt Cass has come back upstairs until she sits down next to him. 

“It’s okay to be sad, Tadashi,” she murmurs, wrapping her arms around him. “I’m sad, too. It’s hard to lose people you love. Don’t be afraid to admit that, sweetie.” 

He turns his head into her chest and cries. She lets him.

ii.

He’s thirteen and he’s sick. Aunt Cass has made chicken dumpling soup, and tucked him into the couch with blankets and pillows and turned on cartoon movies to watch. He thought it would be fun to miss school and watch cartoons all day, just for a day, but this isn’t really how he wanted it. His head feels heavy and he can’t stop sneezing and even his favorite movies do nothing to cheer him up. 

The only good thing that comes out of this is that his fever makes Mochi even more inclined to cuddle with him, if only to soak up the extra heat. He finishes off his soup, and sits the bowl on the ground -- he feels too tired to stand up and take it to the sink. He takes a drink of the pink sports drink Aunt Cass got him and then promptly curls up under the blankets and falls asleep, Mochi curled up against his abdomen.

When he wakes up, Aunt Cass is sitting next to him, stroking his hair as she watches  _ Mulan _ . Tadashi smiles a little bit and snuggles closer. Perhaps there’s two good things to come out of this. 

iii.

High school sucks. Trying to fit in sucks even more. It's hard to fit in when your best friend is your nine year old little brother. Teenagers are mean. He lifts his shirt over his head and pokes gingerly at the bruise forming on his stomach with a grimace. Now that he's looking in the mirror and can see it properly, it looks worse than it did before. He knew better than to pick a fight with the kids bullying Hiro. 

But someone had to stand up for him. And if not Tadashi, then who? 

He was just glad Hiro wasn't there to see it, glad he'd had the foresight to tell Hiro to go get someone before he threw the first punch.

The doorknob rattles and Tadashi realizes he forgot to lock the door as Aunt Cass comes in. For some reason, he feels ashamed when she sees the bruise that's begun to blossom upon his abdomen. 

"What happened?" She murmurs, and there's something in her voice that Tadashi can't identify but it fills him with anxiety all the same.

"I got in a fight -- It wasn't my fault, really! Okay, it was kinda my fault; I punched him first, but he was being mean to Hiro. What else was I supposed to do?" The words tumble out in a rush. It's a wonder Cass can understand him at all.

"Who did it?" 

Tadashi looks down at his feet and doesn't answer. She sighs and walks out of the room, and Tadashi feels like he's disappointed her. 

At dinner, she tells him that he and Hiro will start karate classes after school this Wednesday, and that next time he has an 'incident', she expects names. 

The bruise still hurts, but knowing Aunt Cass cares enough to worry about his safety makes him feel better about it.

iv.

It's his first day of university and he's nervous. It's not going to be like high school, he knows, and in some ways that's a good thing -- but it could also end up being bad. What if it turns out he can't keep up with the coursework? What if it turns out he's not actually smart enough for SFIT? What if he fails?

Aunt Cass gives him a tight hug and hands him a brown paper bag. "For lunch, in case you're having too much fun to come home."

When he opens the bag at lunch, he finds an apple and an onigiri, and a sticky note which reads ' _ You got this! _ ' 

He tucks the sticky note into a textbook and smiles when he sees it again later.

v.

The sun is starting to rise when Tadashi finally stops working for the night. He’s exhausted, and he hasn’t showered or ate in far too long, and it feels like he hasn’t really made any progress at all during the night. In an ideal world, he’d be going home to sleep right now. It’s not an ideal world, though, and he has a biochem test at 9 am that he hasn’t studied for at all, so he’s going home to shower and eat and get a cup (or four) of coffee, and then he will come back to his lab, and cram before he runs across campus. He texts his aunt to let her know he’s alive, then he starts the drive home.

When he arrives, Aunt Cass is already up -- probably has been for an hour or two -- and working on the pastries to be served in the cafe today. A pot of coffee is waiting on him, and he pours himself a cup and lets Cass usher him into a seat to chat for a bit as she works on rolling out dough. When he finishes the first cup, she pours him a second, and reminds him to come home and rest more often. He nods, standing up and stretching, but he thinks they both know that won’t be happening. 

As he walks up the stairs, sipping on his coffee, she calls his name. He stops to look back, and she smiles at him.

“I’m proud of you, you know that, right?”

“I know.”

Aunt Cass always did have a way of knowing what he needed to hear. 

i.

She's dressed in all black, carrying a branch of cherry blossoms in her arms as she steps through the grass alone. Finally, she comes to a stop in front of a gravestone -- Tadashi's gravestone.

_ In loving memory of _

_ Tadashi Hamada  _

_ Beloved brother, nephew, friend _

She places the cherry blossoms upon his grave and sinks down to her knees. "Oh honey," she whispers, "It was too soon for you to go." Her fingers trace the words carved into the stone. "We all miss you so -- you had so much to do. It's --" Her voice cracks, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. "It's not right, seeing Hiro and your friends keep growing without you."

She wipes at her face, sniffles a little. "It's hard to lose people you love. This time, it's the hardest yet." 

She remains there on the ground for a moment, mourning the boy she helped raise into a man. Then slowly, she rises to her feet.

"I'm still proud of you, you know that right? You grew up to be stronger than anyone I know. I'm proud to say you're part of me."

She turns and walks away, stifling a sob. She misses him so.


End file.
